


Vesperpool Anomaly

by Aithilin



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Alternate Universe - Merpeople, Fluff, M/M, hunter!Gladio, mer may, mer!Noct
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-06
Updated: 2018-05-06
Packaged: 2019-05-03 05:53:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,408
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14562306
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aithilin/pseuds/Aithilin
Summary: Gladio never became a hunter to make friends, but that didn’t stop it from happening. He didn’t mean to get attached.





	Vesperpool Anomaly

When he had first become a hunter, Gladiolus expected more adventure and less discomfort. He had looked forward to the mornings waking up with the crack of dawn, stepping from his tent on the plateau of some haven out in the wilds and breathing in deep clean air unsullied by the heaps of life and litter of Lestallum. He had expected nights under the stars, and fierce fights that left him exhausted and fulfilled by the time he stumbled back to the sanctified glow of the havens. He had hoped for cross country trees along trails cut by chocobos and generations of hunters alike. 

He hadn’t planned for the nights where he was patching himself up, desperately trying to stem the flow of blood from wounds so predators wouldn't follow his trail. He hadn't thought of the long weeks tracking his quarry and bounty while supplies and funds ran low. And decisions had to be made between food and fuel to get home. Or when supplies ran low and he had to make due with whatever he could scrape together. 

Ignis had probably saved his life when he gifted him that net meant for fishing off the coast. 

Gladiolus had laid it out in the secluded bays of the Vesperpool the night before, watching the lights from other fishermen along the distant shore flicker and brighten against the threat of daemons in the wet trees, long lines flashing in the dying light as the hobbyists resolutely refused to give up the little peace they had eked out along the shoreline. He tied his net to the roots of some of the strange trees, and rigged it like a trap to scoop up anything he might sift through in the mornings if his own meal— even if it had a snapping maw of its own.

When he returned in the morning, he had been pleased to see the trap sprung, the ball of the net hanging above the water and still. He saw the fin first, the frill and hardened scale, sahagin leather resting in plates against pale skin as the netting twisted in the morning light. He only knew it wasn't a beast by the clever blue eyes watching his approach, and the pale hands tighten against the rope. 

“What the hell are you?” 

He wondered if the frills were a decoration, if the young man was somehow feral in the Vesperpool, or a resident of the nearby outposts driven into seclusion by some beast or another. He thought the fin was a fake, just a trick of the morning light and his exhaustion. Until it all moved as one and the momentum swung the captured creature towards him. He caught the net, and was nearly clawed for standing his ground. 

“What the hell?!”

“Let me down,” the creature hissed, eyes reflecting the pale reds of the Solheim ruins closing as the sun rose. 

Gladiolus pushed the pendulum of the netting back and danced out of reach as he tried to figure out what the creature was. His curiosity got the better of him and he stepped closer again, warned now by the creature’s movements and sharp claws. He spotted a flash of fang and a sullen coolness in blue eyes as the night faded. The creature was intelligent and quick, clearly wearing a fashioned armour, if not carrying a weapon. 

He spotted the sharp little blade just beneath the surface of the waters, a honed edge chiseled from the curve if a bone, serrated like the teeth of one of the beasts that prowled the waters. The marking carved into the handle a match for the Solheim marking cut into the nearby ruins. 

“How did you end up in there?” He mused, realizing that the blade must have dropped in the night. Before the net could be cut open. 

The creature glared at him in what he could only describe as a sulk. 

“If I let you go,” the creature perked up as Gladio moved closer to where he had tied off the trap; “you're not allowed to kill me.”

“No promises.”

“Yes, promises.” He pocketed the strange blade and started on the knots, holding the rope in place rather than let it drop as it unravelled. “I'm letting you go. That should get me a life debt or something.”

“You set the trap.”

“You got stuck in it.”

“You don't get spared because you caught me in the first place.”

“Then I can leave you here. I don't know what you are, but I'm sure something will eat you.”

“You wouldn't.”

“Not if you leave me alone.”

He knew the creature was smart. He could see the calculations in his eyes, the problem being weighed. If nothing else, the small mercy it bought of a head start would be enough for Gladio to get away from the waters. Away from wherever this thing cold reach him if it came back while he was unguarded. 

He could see that the creature didn't appear to be much younger than himself. “Look, I meant to catch fish, or something small. It was an accident that I got you, okay?”

“Fine,” the creature agreed and Gladio started to ease it back into the shallows. They stared at each other for a moment before the creature vanished into the waters, sliding beneath the surface and leaving Gladio with an empty net and an empty stomach. 

He resolved to make the trip back to Meldacio for a new bounty. Clearly he had been spending far too much time working the strange waters of the Vesperpool alone. 

It was months before he made it back to the secluded lake. Nearly half a year of kicking his way through Duscae and Cleigne, even the edges of Leide where the prairie hunters offered him some easy jobs he could work alone. Somewhere along the way, between the soft lights of Galdin Quay and the farmland in Cleigne, he picked up a photographer. One who decided that wandering with a hunter was safer than wandering alone. 

Gladio was glad for the company. 

He never lost the strange bone knife he had taken off that creature. But when Prompto suggested that they head up to the Vesperpool again, Gladio figured he could finally toss it back into the waters where he found it and be done with the whole mess. Wipe the incident from his mind entirely and bury the last of the evidence in the still waters if the Pool. The preparations were easier now, with two people going through the familiar lists. Prompto’s planning enough to at least cover the basics of what they needed for a few days. 

But of course it was his luck that he'd get stranded in some secluded little part of the lake, in the rain, while Prompto chased after his spooked chocobo. Only to lose his light in the dark. The red gleam of the Solheim ruins— the pattern of markings that must have once meant something— was shining through the trees and rain with some sinister promise, reflecting its ancient magic across the water as Gladio sat and waited for Prompto to rescue him. 

“You came back.”

The creature was in the reeds next to the pier that someone had built on this little outcropping. Peeking at him from behind damp hair. 

Gladio glared at the creature in his misery. “I thought we had a deal.”

“Did we?”

“Yeah, you leave me alone if I let you go.”

“And here you are.” The creature smirked in the looking dark and in the strange light cast by the ruins. “Back in my waters.”

“I let you go, you leave me alone.”

“If you really want me to.”

Gladio hesitated at that. It was night, and raining, and he could just barely make out Prompto’s yellow chocobo on the distant shore, knowing that the birds would get spooked again in the night-dark waters. He huffed a sigh and settled as much as he could on the wet little outcrop, holding out the keepsake knife. “Here, this is yours.”

The creature took it as an invitation and settled in the reeds, long tail with its inky black scales threading through the water. They stayed there until dawn, until the strange lights from the ruins faded with the sun, and Prompto managed to figure out his rescue. Gladio had learnt about the waters, and the strange airs that still fell over the Vesperpool, the unease that carried itself across the morning mists over the water. He learnt that the creature was named Noctis, and that he came in from the colder Lucinia Sound years ago, from the tunnels and ruins that were buried beneath the impassable mountains. He learnt that the creature, Noctis, had only been in that net because it had seemed like a good spot to sleep in the shallows. 

By the time Prompto reached him, Gladio decided that he liked Noctis. The little brat that he was. 

There were more visits and trips to the Vesperpool, to the quiet havens and to the shores where the fishermen happily told them stories of the creature who saved their lures and freed their lines from the grasses when they miscast. Who set the fish on the banks for them when they had a day with nothing to show for it. 

And who never seemed to ask for anything. It was agreed that the creature was kind, if shy, darting away while the men pretended not to see it. 

Gladio took to bringing some extra snacks along to tempt Noctis out of hiding some nights. 

Until there was a bounty. Until there were hunters with an eye for trophies more than just surviving. Gladio took what he could, and let the bounties linger as the creature in the Vesperpool was exaggerated and built up through glimpses and stories, and fear. He found that the first bounty came from a fisherman who hadn’t listened to the others; who cast his line out well past their agreed places, who carved out a corner of the shore prone to attacks from daemons, where even Noctis didn't linger. There was the bounty placed by another hunter, whose partner had vanished beneath the still waters as he tried to find a way into the ruins, and Noctis had left his dog tags on a tree branch to bring home. 

“You need to leave,” Gladio warned one night, perched at the edge of a pier as Prompto slept in the safety of the haven. The tackle shop was closed, the lights a dull glow across the starlit waters, and the lamps of the familiar fixtures of the fishermen on the opposite shore just a touch brighter than normal. “I can't keep holding them off, you can't hide for much longer.”

“Maybe I don't want to hide,” Noctis, Gladio had learnt, was stubborn on the best of days. 

“Then you're an idiot. I'm trying to protect you.”

“I'm not leaving.”

“Yes, you are. You have to.”

“Or?”

Gladio had seen the trophies in Meldacio. There were bones and horns. And probably worse buried deep in the homes carved out of the hills. “I'm not going to come back. If you want to see me again, you have to find me elsewhere.”

Noctis paused at that, not sure what to make of the threat, of the promised threats against his life, of Gladio. “Where?”

He thought if the safest place by the water, where the clear warm ocean stretched out towards the horizon. Where the hunters would leave well enough alone, because there was an entire coastline to hide in. There were caves and rocky cliffs, and a stretch of quiet beach. Where Ignis had always promised he was welcome; “Galdin Quay, do you know it?”

“No.”

“Well I'll be there. If you can get to the ocean, you can get to there.”

“It'll take forever.”

“I'll wait, Noct.”

He smiled at the dubious look that warned him, at the skepticism and wariness as the creature pulled himself from the water enough to kiss him. “It's a promise then. But I'll eat you if you're not there.”

“How do you plan to eat me if you can't find me?”

“Shut up.”

Galdin Quay was peaceful. It was a resort, where tourists came to stay or book passage to other parts of the Empire. Where the hunters were hesitant to go, because it was easy to be miscast when you carried the kinds of weapons they did. The bounties in the Vesperpool remained, and for a year, Gladio resisted the urge to return. He trained Prompto instead, and handed him off to Dave to get his own dog tags. He helped collect ingredients for Ignis, with one eye on the waters. 

He had watched the sun set over the ocean, and the gleam of mystery from Angelgard, collecting rumours and bounties and earning his keep while Iris took up with Prompto to roam the coasts instead. He settled into a pattern as the ferries pulled away from crowded docks— clearing the roads in the night, and staying long weeks at the haven down the beach rather than his own borrowed bed. 

Gladio had taken to having a morning run along the sandy stretch of pristine beach. Of chatting with the fishermen who rotated their spaces between the lakes of Eos and the vast oceans. 

And he waited, just like he promised. 

For a year, he watched the rough seas with their white capped waves, and settled at the haven with one eye on the ocean depth.

It was raining when he saw the familiar tail in the waters off the coast. The sky and sea bled together in a dull grey, with the constant swell and flow of the water on,y broken by the strange movements. 

“Noct?”

Gladio settled in the sand, feet in the water as he watched for the movement again. As he waited for something he had forgotten he was holding his breath for. 

Noctis arrived all at once, riding the wave to Gladio’s feet, and throwing a fish into his human’s lap. “Cook that. And you had better be worth that stupid trip.”

“I'll try to be.”

“Food first. Apologies later.”

“Apologies? You think you have something to be sorry for?”

“You do. I should eat you on principle. Do you gave any idea how far I had to swim?”

“Good to see you too, Noct.”


End file.
